BIRDS OF THE AUSTRALASIAN SOUTH POLAR QUADRANT. 
Sometimes the chick would face the same way as the parent, and then but 
little of its anatomy was out of sight, for the main increase in bulk was in the 
lower third of its body, till the little individual became almost pyramidal in shape. 
The legs and feet of the chicks soon became comparatively coarse and heavy 
for their size. They certainly need to have them hard and horny, living as they 
do on the old bird’s scaly feet. 
The usual position taken up in the earlier stages was a crouching attitude 
with the head as low as the feet, and it appeared to make little difference whether 
the chick sat upright on its nurse’s feet or lay upon its side. The chicks when 
quite small are invisible so long as the nurse keeps still, but have the power, 
and use it frequently, of poking the head out from beneath the flap to look 
about and whistle for more food. 
If one forced an old bird with a chicken to move, it would shuffle along 
awkwardly as though the feet were tied together, never exposing the chicken 
or changing from a plantigrade mode of progression. If one hurried such a 
bird a little more, it would over-balance forwards, and try then to retain the 
chicken with its feet, helping itself along with beak and wings. If still pressed 
to move rapidly, the feet were involuntarily brought into action, and the 
chicken very soon stepped out behind, being left sprawling and piping in the 
open on the ice, to be pounced upon by the nearest unemployed adults without 
delay. 
Obviously, the chicken, as I have said, are common property, and they 
must change hands scores of times while they are dependent upon the adults 
for their food. In feeding, the old birds, having regurgitated some semi- 
digested food into its pharynx, allowed the chicken to supply itself from there 
by poking its head and bill inside the parent’s mouth. 
The food of the Emperor Penguin consists mainly of fish and cephalopoda, 
the bones and the horny beaks of which are constantly accompanied by pebbles 
in the stomach. Crustaceans of various ki nds are eaten as well as fish, but the 
latter seem to form the bulk of their ordinary diet. That so many large birds 
are able to find food for themselves in these southern waters, even in the depth 
of winter, proves conclusively that there is a great abundance of marine life 
under the ice throughout the year. That fish were so abundant we knew mainly 
by the contents of the stomachs of seals and Penguins. 
It may seem strange that during the winter months the sea was not so 
completely frozen over as to prevent the Penguins from entering it every day. 
One realises, on skinning an Emperor Penguin, that the very substantial 
layer of fat beneath its skin, quite indispensable in such a climate, can only be 
maintained by a constant and abundant take of food at all times. The 
season of the year when this layer of fat is most ample is, as one would expect, 
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